


got a heart atomic style

by Nokomis



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Can be read as gen, F/M, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Furiosa and Max, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	got a heart atomic style

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mynuet, who wanted to see what I thought romance in the Fury Road 'verse would look like. Thanks to Lielabell and Pud for looking over this. <3

Immortan Joe might have fallen, but that didn’t make the world any less chaotic. 

Furiosa doesn’t want it but leadership falls to her; she had the respect of the War Boys even before shit went sideways and the former wives still look up to her, still treat her like she’s their savior, even though they were all in that war rig together.

Being a good shot and having a ruthless disposition aren’t everything, she tries to show them, but in this world, it counts for a helluva lot. The only saving grace is that no one expects her to run everything. As always, in a vacuum, leaders emerge from the rabble and the broken to take charge in unexpected ways. An old man with a mouthful of jagged teeth starts digging a crude aqueduct; a young girl with a face full of nuclear bumps starts in on food distribution (everyone’s shares suddenly level out); and The Dag becomes a fixture in the gardens. Her precious seeds are reverently placed in the precious pots of soil that aren’t radioactive. 

But there’s things that can’t come from their hard-won scrap of earth. Even with the precious well, even with their horde of War Boys chanting Furiosa’s name now even though Immortan Joe’s brands still stand out in sharp relief on their ghostly skin, even with the elderly and the women and the malformed turning the Citadel into something the ones who remember _before_ call a community… The outside world still exists. 

That’s Furiosa’s realm --defending the Citadel. Keeping a stranglehold on the power they seized. Deciding who to trade with, which of Immortan Joe’s contacts to appease and which to make demands of. 

Which to destroy.

News of Immortan Joe’s destruction has spread through the wasteland like fallout. Easy pickings, they say, there’s _water_ , and it should be _ours_.

Max is the first one to warn her. He got his car back, after everything, and he slides in and out of the Citadel like a ghost. Sometimes she doesn’t even realize he’s back until he’s in the room with her, silently watching her tighten a bolt on the War Rig. He doesn’t lean against the wall, doesn’t pace the room like a War Boy might. Doesn’t offer to help her. He just waits until she’s finished.

“Guzzol-boys are planning something,” he says the first time he returns, and offers her something, eyes trained on the floor. She takes it; it’s a boxcutter, and when she clicks it open the blade is shiny and sharp, no rust to be seen. It’s comfortable in her hand.

“I’ll send out some boys,” she replies thoughtfully, running through a list of skeletal faces in her mind, wondering who’s most expendable, who’s most useful. Who is already closest to Valhalla.

Max grunts, and turns to leave. Furiosa knows he might not come back, or he might be back tomorrow. Doesn’t matter. She says it anyway. “Thank you, Max.”

His shoulders stiffen like she’d fired a shot when she says his name. He never turns, doesn’t seek her out again before he returns to the desert.

He’s back sixteen days later. The Gas Town bastards have been laid to rest, and Furiosa is in the war room, adding the new traps they’d discovered to the map. They’re labeled in used-oil black and antifreeze green and the heart blood red of transmission fluid.

“We showed them,” she says, voice softer than when she’d screamed the same thing from Immortan Joe’s perch above the masses, bloody fist in the air and the crowd howling its satisfaction below. 

(She knows what he felt, now, sees how he could form himself into a god. She won’t let that happen to herself.)

He sets a bag on the table with a thud; she tugs it open to find a carburetor. 

“Four barrel,” he says unnecessarily. It still reeks of burnt fuel; it’s beautiful.

“Come eat, Max,” she says. The flinch is back; ghosts in his eyes that feed on her voice. But he comes anyway.

She keeps the carburetor in her room like a secret. It should go to the mechanics, should be put to use on one of the cars, the new ones they’re frankensteining together from the charred and twisted corpses of the crashed, but Max disappears back into the abyss and she can’t quite let go.

She doesn’t think about the why, doesn’t want to. She has too much to do. 

It’s a month before Max returns. They’ve taken in a group of Devil Boys from the west, dull-eyed men who don’t mind getting their hands dirty for a sip of fresh water. Capable has taken them in hand, is leading them with strength that Furiosa is grateful to see. 

Sometimes she thinks, I could go too. I could ride to the horizon, through sand and sweat and tears, and be free. 

But _this_ is freedom. This is what they killed the old order for, this is what Splendid died for. 

They all call her Imperator, all but the former wives, and Furiosa might be fading away. She sends War Boys off to Valhalla and works the Repair Boys to the bone and there are still people hungry, there still isn’t _enough_ , not of food or rest or hope, but there never will be. The ragged remains of the Vuvalini are as safe as they’re gonna get, and Furiosa could be done. Should be done.

She knows there’s nothing she’d change, knows that this is who she’s fought to become. A leader, the one making the rules, not one subservient to the whims of others. But the walls loom high.

It’s been forty-seven hard-won days, and Max comes limping into the canteen, a new scar decorating his face like a chrome fender and his hands empty. He nods at her, gestures at her to follow him without saying anything. Speech is still sacred for him, rusty and croaked like dying words. 

She leaves everyone behind, marches behind him, then beside him, as they emerge into the sunlight.

The Interceptor’s pulled up near the door, dusty and the sweet smell of exhaust still clinging to it like a haze. A couple heavy chains are running from the back axle, hooked up to another car. Furiosa approaches the car slowly; the paint is chipping and flaking off, pitted by the sand, but there’s no mistaking it. The car is _yellow_ , bright as the sun and sand and unmistakably, impossibly bright. The car is pure. The end of the world left it intact.

“Found it,” Max says hoarsely, without telling where or how or what he paid for it. His shoulders are hunched, and he opens the door -- there are _windows_ , miraculously unshattered glass obscured with dirt -- and pops the hood. She trails her fingers along the bright impossible paint as he lifts it up. The engine is huge; Furiosa can already imagine how quickly the world will blur into nothingness around her as she shifts gears. “440. Needs a few things.” He gestures; the radiator line is dry-rotted and there’s no battery, no fan, no _carburetor_. “Thought of you.”

The last words are so quiet Furiosa might have imagined them. She has the War Rig, if she needs it, but this…

She thinks of Max, fleeing into the wasteland, and wonders if it’ll clear her head, to do the same. If leaving, for an hour or a day at a time, might shake free the chains the Citadel is slowly wrapping her in.

If she might cross his path out there. 

“Thank you,” she says, just as softly. Then deliberately, boldly, while touching his cheek and meeting his eyes dead on, she adds, “Max.”

He doesn’t flinch. Finally, he doesn’t flinch. 

“Furiosa,” he says.


End file.
